[Ben]

Is anyone else observing slow call connection? I.e. lots of silence before the ringing actually begins?

I've been noticing it a lot lately in multiple locations. Not sure if it's iPhone-specific or just O2 being, well, O2.

[Hands0n]

It has been diabolical for quite a while. I reckon on anything upto a minute or more is not unusual

[miffed]

Yes ! Was going to post on this subject

Used to notice it from time to time , but lately it has been pretty much every call I make :(

Come on o2 - this is your chance to shine .... but you seem to be cracking under the pressure at every turn !

[Ben]

It's taking me longer waiting for the phone to start ringing than it does to get through once the ringing actually starts! Grr!

[Hands0n]

@O2 on Twitter has been alive with much of O2's problems for the past few weeks

[a_ukboy]

I've also noticed this, the past couple of weeks and seems to be getting worse, I've also noticed a big increase in call failures too, I'm currently in Cornwall on holiday and I would say over 50% of my calls are failing.. And before I come here I checked on o2's webmap at the coverage with the postcode here, it told me good 3g coverage all around, well I can tell you not a sniff of it.. Nice one o2.. But 2g's good here

[gorilla]

I would suspect this is a nationwide fault. I have had this since day one (when I called to ask why I had no 3G in my house when my N95 with the same sim did!) on the iPhone and it varies to this day depending on time of day. O2 don't seem to be able to handle spikes in traffic.

[Hands0n]

This is definitely a core O2 problem - and one that they are remaining absolutely tight-lipped about.

Twitter is alive with people all over the country complaining about exactly the same fault - no matter what phone they are using. I think the iPhone users are complaining more frequently because they are typically data users also, and the data is slow to non-existent.

Today I was in a local cafe in E1 trying to access Talk3G, Twitter and Facebook (no not all at the same time! Not on an iPhone, at any rate :D). From click to the data beginning to come back took well over a minute, getting on for 90 seconds. At other times the request would just timeout.

In exactly the same cafe, several months earlier this year, the 3G data had been reasonably good. But no more.

If O2 are not careful they'll be seeing quite a migration away from their network. Particular worry for O2 will be when the other networks get the iPhone - at which point there will be no reason at all to put up with the atrociousness that it has become of late.

What a great shame that will be.

[hecatae]

calls are slow to connect on any phone on the o2 network, it's not iphone specific, had my first freeze on my iphone3g today, just because 2 texts came through at the same time

[Ben]

Lets not forget this isn't the only endemic issue in O2's network. While notoriously difficult to identify, dropping off of the network (https://talk3g.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7110) is another fault that I'm able to see every day in my line of work that only affects O2.